I had the privilege of going to Yale Divinity School with many bright and talented people, full of passion and creativity. Two of those people, Emily Scott and Rachel Pollack, have spent the past three years building a church in Brooklyn called St. Lydia's. According to their website, "St. Lydia’s is a Dinner Church. We gather every Sunday evening to cook and share a sacred meal, just as the first followers of Jesus did. We eat, explore scripture, offer prayers, and sing together...St. Lydia’s is an experiment in what the Church might be when the meal we share is at the center of our life together."
I have never been to St. Lydia's, but I have diligently followed their website and blogs from the very beginning. What my friends are building helps me think more creatively about what church can and should be. I think they are bringing something exciting and vital to the table of Christianity, and I want to support their ministry in two important ways: First, I want to spread the word about St. Lydia's to those who might find a home there. Second, I want to help St. Lydia's raise the funds they need to survive and grow.
With those goals in mind, I'll be writing more about St. Lydia's from time to time in the weeks ahead. I encourage you to visit their website to learn more about who they are and what they do. Then, if you feel so moved, pay them a visit and/or offer a donation. I will also be running the marathon in a St. Lydia's t-shirt, designed by Rachel, and hoping that some fellow runners follow me to their table!
To begin, I want to offer some background on St. Lydia herself. Below is a sermon I preached at my church, St. Andrew's UMC in Edgewater, MD on Mother's Day 2010. The text is Acts 16:9-15, which tells the story of Lydia and her role in the early church. I do not mention St. Lydia's explictly, but they were definitely on my mind as I wrote about Christian hospitality. Within this sermon, I mention two great books: Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition by Christine Pohl, and The Boneshaker by my friend Kate Milford. Follow the links to learn more about those books.
Thanks for your support!
Acts 16:9-15
9During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. 11We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, 12and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. 13On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. 14A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. 15When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.
Welcome Home:
Acts 16: 9-15
When I was a little girl, I loved nothing more than having friends over to my house. I loved to walk them through the house for the first time, showing them all my toys, books, and pictures, and telling the well-worn stories that went with each room: how my dad made my dresser in the basement but couldn’t get it up the stairs, how he built me a 2-story playhouse when all I wanted was a tent, how a friend once tried to call her mom from the mixer mounted on the kitchen wall. When I had taken my friend through the whole house, we would go for a walk around the neighborhood, where the show and tell would continue: here’s where I learned to ride a bike; here’s where my neighbor found baby ducks in her pool and I walked them to the beach. I wanted my friend to know all about me: my family, my things, my stories, my home.
I also loved going to other people’s houses. There was always something fascinating about meeting my friends’ families, seeing their rooms, eating at their kitchen tables. The most interesting parts were the differences: I couldn’t believe that one mom would let us walk to the drugstore all by ourselves or watch whatever we wanted on TV, while another mom never let us out of her sight and only allowed pre-screened, G-rated videos. Some houses had pools, some had trampolines, and some had hidden rooms left over from “the olden days.” Macaroni and cheese tasted a little bit different in every house.
Something about going over to someone’s house, or having them over to yours, cemented a friendship. You could talk to somebody at school every day, but it wasn’t the same. Once you saw each other’s rooms, met each other’s dogs, ate food cooked by each other’s moms, then you were really friends.
For me, its not so different now. I don’t have my own family yet, so I spend a lot of time with my friends. And I still find that nothing cements a friendship like having someone over your house. My best friends have spent so much time at my house that they can fix their own drinks and snacks and pull out the sofa-bed without any help. When I have parties, I’ll often find my oldest friends giving my newer friends tours, and telling their own stories about things that happened in this or that room. In many ways, they feel like my house is their house too, and I love that.
Given how much I like having friends over, its no surprise that I chose to go into ministry. As we see in this morning’s text from Acts, this is how many of the first churches got started: with people inviting other people over to their houses. In many ways, the story of Lydia inviting Paul and his companions into her home is typical of the early church.
Jesus grew up studying the Hebrew scriptures, which are filled with rules and instructions about welcoming the stranger. In Genesis, Abraham and Sarah provide hospitality for three mysterious travelers, only to learn that they are actually angels in disguise. In Exodus, the Israelites rely on God’s hospitality to provide food, water, and shelter as they wander in the desert. Once the Israelites reach the Promised Land, they are instructed by God to always remember the stranger, since they were once strangers in Egypt. For the Jewish people, providing hospitality is a way of honoring God and their history.
In his own ministry, Jesus honors his Jewish heritage by both offering and depending on hospitality. Over and over again, Jesus gives everything he has to anyone who asks: his attention, his healing touch, his food, and finally his own life. At the same time, Jesus and his disciples rely on the hospitality of strangers to meet their basic needs. They travel without food, extra clothes, or money. When they visit a new place, they depend on kind strangers to take them in and provide for them. In his teachings, Jesus emphasizes hospitality as the sign of a true believer. Perhaps the most famous example of this is Matthew 25, when Jesus says “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me…” At the Last Supper, Jesus teaches his disciples to remember him by practicing the most basic act of hospitality: sharing bread and wine.
So, really, Paul and Lydia are just continuing a long-standing tradition. Paul and his companions travel to Phillipi not knowing how they will get by. They meet Lydia, and share their Gospel message with her. Lydia, in gratitude for the word, offers Paul and his friends food and shelter. It seems like a simple, nice story with a simple, nice message, perfect for Mother’s Day. Welcome new people, listen to them, treat them with kindness, and share what you have.
When I first read this text, I was tempted to fill a sermon with simple, heartwarming stories of women being generous and hospitable and call it a day. But I don’t think that would do justice to this story, or to the idea of Christian hospitality. The more I study this story and read about hospitality in the early church, the more I realize that true Christian hospitality isn’t always nice, and its almost never simple. If we take a closer look at the story of Paul and Lydia, we learn a few things about Christian hospitality which make it a new and challenging idea, both in Paul’s time and in ours.
First, Christian hospitality brings people together in new and unexpected ways. During Paul and Lydia’s time, society was totally centered around the family. People lived, worked, traveled, and worshipped with their families. Women, like Lydia, had no identity apart from family. As children, they were the property of their fathers. When they got married, they became the property of their husbands. Living independently was not socially accepted, or even safe, for a woman.
Yet, Lydia defies these customs. Maybe she’s a widow, or maybe she’s never been married. Either way, at the time of this story, she is a woman living independently, supporting herself by selling cloth. Even more unusual, she is a Gentile woman worshipping with Jews. The Jewish community in the city of Phillipi is tiny- we can tell because they celebrate the Sabbath at a river instead of in a Temple. They are almost certainly outcasts. Yet, for whatever reason, Lydia is drawn to them. By the time she meets Paul, she is a social oddball in two ways: a Gentile woman living on her own, celebrating the Sabbath with Jews.
Paul is an oddball too. Before his conversion, Paul was a Pharisee, a devout keeper of the Jewish laws and customs. After his conversion, Paul rebelled against the other early church leaders. Many of them believed that only Jews should become Christians. If a non-Jew wanted to become a Christian, the church leaders required that person to adopt the Jewish laws and customs first. Paul made the radical move of deliberately preaching the Gospel to Gentiles, and making faith in Christ the only requirement for new Christians. This is why Paul goes to Phillipi in the first place: he is on a mission to spread Christianity beyond the Jewish communities, into the whole world.
Choosing to work together is a risky move for both Paul and Lydia. Without the protection of a father or husband, Lydia makes the brave choice to go from one persecuted religious minority to an even smaller and more persecuted minority. She opens herself up to gossip and scandal by housing strange men in her home. For Paul, Lydia’s home is not the ideal place to set up his base in Phillipi. He is also opening himself up to scandal by staying with an unmarried woman. Lydia doesn’t exactly give his movement credibility- a wealthy and prominent man would make a more appealing leader for his new church. Yet, Paul doesn’t worry about any of this. He offers the Gospel to anyone who will listen, and accepts the leader that God provides for him. Christ’s message takes these two people, who are strangers in every possible sense of the word, and turns them into a new family.
This story also teaches us that Christian hospitality doesn’t count the cost. Lydia doesn’t tell Paul and his friends to come and stay at her house for a couple of nights until they find a hotel. She just tells them to come and stay. She instantly drops whatever plans she had for herself, and invites this group of strangers to stay in her home, sleep in her beds, use her bathrooms, and eat her food, for as long as they want. I think that’s pretty generous.
In a book about the history of Christian hospitality, Methodist scholar Christine Pohl identifies this radical generosity as the single most important thing which set Christian hospitality apart from other traditions. During Paul’s time, the kind of hospitality practiced in Greek and Roman cities, like Phillipi, reinforced the social hierarchy. People were expected to offer hospitality to their families, members of their religious communities, and prominent citizens, with the idea that their hospitality would be reciprocated. In other words, people welcomed their friends and neighbors, with the expectation that they would be welcomed in return. Less prominent members of the community offered hospitality to more prominent members, in the hopes of improving their own social standing. No invitations were issued without the host asking “what’s in it for me?”
Early Christians, on the other hand, offered hospitality to anyone and everyone, with no expectation of receiving anything in return. In fact, they went out of their way to offer hospitality to people who could not possibly return the favor. The early Christians saw offering hospitality to the poor as one of the holiest things a believer could do, because it involved giving without the expectation of gain. Also, rather than using hospitality to reinforce social hierarchies, the early Christians used hospitality to make everyone equal. In early churches, everything was shared in common, so rich and poor community members sat around the same tables and ate the same simple food. Believers like Lydia, who were used to being the heads of households, took turns serving the community just like everybody else. Early Christians used hospitality to reinforce and demonstrate a very powerful, radical idea: that all believers are equal in God’s eyes.
Finally, this story teaches us that Christian hospitality is about opening up to one another completely, without reservation. When Lydia tells Paul and his companions “come and stay at my home,” she doesn’t say “but give me an hour to clean up first.” Knowing that Paul is coming to her house, Lydia doesn’t run ahead of him and start hiding things in her closets. She invites him to see her home and her family just as they are. Similarly, the book of Acts and the letters of Paul invite readers to see the early Christians just as they are. Take some time to read these books, and you’ll see that they are chock full of arguments. Paul and the other church leaders engage in passionate and not always civil debates with one another about everything involved in the new church: who should be in charge, who should be allowed in, and what they should believe. Rather than giving readers a cleaned-up, flattering look at the early church, Paul and the other leaders open themselves up completely, inviting us to see the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Our founder, John Wesley, believed that this kind of openness was at the heart of Christian life. He organized all of the early Methodist societies into small groups, called “classes” and “bands.” These groups met for at least an hour each week so that members could share their faith journeys. It sounds like a nice, simple idea, but Wesley’s groups were not the kind of faith-sharing groups you see at churches today. These were not groups of church members who gathered over coffee to share joys and concerns. Wesley’s groups were more like public interrogations or confessionals.
At every weekly Methodist band meeting, members pledged “To speak each of us in order, freely and plainly, the true state of our souls, with the faults we have committed in thought, word, or deed, and the temptations we have felt since our last meeting.” Once each member had shared, a leader asked everyone in the group probing questions. Wesley required each person to be asked these five questions at every single meeting:
1) What known sins have you committed since our last meeting?
2) What temptations have you met with?
3) How were you delivered?
4) What have you thought, or said, or done, which you doubt whether it be sin or not?
5) Have you nothing you desire to keep secret?
Just in case group members were tempted not to answer these extremely personal questions honestly, other group members were encouraged to chime in and offer their comments. New members who wanted to join a group had to submit to a highly personal interview, designed to prepare them for the level of scrutiny they would face. Here are some actual questions from that interview:
Do you desire to be told of your faults?
Do you desire to be told of all your faults, and that plain and simple?
Do you desire that every one of us should tell you, from time to time, whatsoever is in his heart concerning you?
Consider! Do you desire that every one of us should tell you, from time to time, whatsoever we think, whatsoever we fear, whatsoever we hear concerning you?
Do you desire that, in doing this, we should come as close as possible; that we should cut to the quick, and search your heart to the bottom?
Wesley, like Paul, Lydia, and the other early church leaders, believed that being a Christian meant opening yourself up completely to other people: not just your home and your wallet, but also your mind and your heart.
Now, as I’ve gone over these important points of Christian hospitality, I imagine that some, if not all of you, have started thinking about our own church. How do we measure up? Have we created an environment in which anyone and everyone is truly welcome? Are we open to whomever God brings to us, no matter how strange or unlikely they seem? Do we consider everyone who walks through our doors an equal and give to one another without counting the cost? And finally, do we open ourselves up to one another completely, without reservation?
On the first points, I think we can all agree that we have some strengths and some weaknesses. These are things we talk about a lot. We’re proud of the way we welcome the stranger and give to the needy through programs like VIM and the food pantry. At the same time, we know we need to work harder to bring new people into our community and to encourage more generosity to support our missions. These are very important points, and there’s a lot more to say about them, but today I’m more interested in the final point: how well do we open ourselves up to one another?
When I compare the church of Paul and Lydia’s time, or the church of Wesley’s time, to the church of our time, this is where I see the most obvious difference. We know that we should be more welcoming and more generous, but do we even believe we should be more open? In our modern church and our modern culture, we’ve made a virtue out of not sharing too much. Teenagers- and some adults- make fun of each other for giving “TMI:” “too much information.” We judge our leaders if they show too much pain or weakness. In our church meetings and offices, we’re so concerned about being polite and agreeable that we often have trouble saying what we mean. I struggle with that all the time. In church council meetings, I have a hard time voicing concerns about the most innocuous budget items. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to go to one of Wesley’s meetings, where church members took turns looking each other in the eye and saying “You know what your problem is?”
From our modern viewpoint, it can be hard to understand why the early Christians thought this kind of openness was so important. Why is sharing our hearts and souls a central part of Christian hospitality, as important as sharing our time and resources? I’ve thought and read a lot about this question over the past few days, so here are a few ideas:
First, sharing invites more sharing. When we’re open about our own thoughts, feelings, dreams, and fears, we give other people permission to open up too. This is one of the reasons Pastor Dave is so effective. Many pastors give sermons that are like public service announcements- they talk about difficult things like family problems or mental illness as if they’ve only read about them in books. It takes a brave person like Pastor Dave to get behind the pulpit and share about his own family or his own depression. But who makes the bigger difference? Which pastor are you going to with your own problems? This is the reason I love having people over my house. Once I welcome someone into my space- let them see my things, look at my pictures, and hear my stories- they feel more comfortable sharing themselves with me. We go from being acquaintances to being friends. Opening ourselves up gives others permission to do the same, and that creates an environment of hospitality.
Also, opening up to one another makes it easier to work together. The early Christians often lived and worked in small, very close communities. In Phillipi, Lydia’s house became the central hub and gathering place of a new church. This community, like the other early churches, had no paid leadership. The early Christians built and sustained it themselves. They cooked and ate together, planned and conducted worship together, went out into the community to preach together, and tended to the poor together. I imagine that things felt a little close for comfort sometimes. I’m sure that Paul got on Lydia’s nerves, or that the two of them disagreed about how to carry out their mission. Airing their differences openly and regularly helped the early Christians vent their frustrations and move forward together, without devolving into gossip and cliques. The same could be said for the early Methodists. A member of a Methodist class might not have liked what the other class members had to say about her, but at least she could trust them to speak to her openly, and to give her the opportunity to air her own grievances. Sharing their thoughts and feelings with one another helped the early Christians stay unified, so they could go about the business of welcoming others.
In today’s church, I think we worry sometimes that the truth is dangerous- that it might be hurtful or divisive. But if we pay attention to the lessons of the early church, I think we see how the truth can bring us together and set us free. If you need further proof, I have a book to recommend:
Over the past few days, I had the great pleasure of reading The Boneshaker, written by Kate Milford. Many of you knew Kate back when she was called Katie Chell and she went to Sunday School here at St. Andrew’s. Kate has always dreamed of being a writer, and this week, her dream came true. After church today, you can all go to any bookstore and buy her first book, and I really hope you will, because it is brilliant. Kate has a lot to say about the truth, and the power it has to either bring people together or keep them apart.
The Boneshaker is about a family and a town with a lot of secrets. In the beginning, Kate’s heroine, a 13 year-old girl named Natalie, is scared to ask about those secrets. But then things start to happen which put Natalie’s family and town in danger. Gradually, Natalie realizes that she can only save the day by finding the courage to ask questions and uncover the truth. Over the course of the book, she finds the courage to question adults, stand up to the town bullies, and even confront the Devil himself. In the end, though, the hardest question for her to ask is directed at her own mother, Annie. Annie is very sick for most of the book, but she hasn’t told Natalie what’s wrong with her, and Natalie has been too afraid to ask. Finally, after all of her adventures, Natalie has the courage to look her mother in the eye and ask “Mama, can you tell me how sick you are, really?” Natalie’s brave question gives Annie the courage to answer truthfully: “Natalie we aren’t sure what it is… its very scary when you know something’s wrong but you don’t know what it is.” The truth doesn’t cure Annie’s body, but it repairs her relationship with Natalie. Sharing their deepest thoughts and worries brings mother and daughter closer than they’ve ever been before.
Paul and Lydia have many things to teach us, but I think the most important is that true hospitality begins with our own closest relationships, with our friends, our families, and our church communities. If we’re going to open ourselves to anyone and everyone, the way God calls us to, we much first be able to open ourselves to one another. Today is Mother’s Day, and I think that the greatest gift any of us can give our mothers or our children is to say something we’ve never been able to say before, or ask a question we’ve never had the courage to ask. Try it, and I bet it opens things up in ways they’ve never been open before. Then, over the next few days and weeks, try to share just a little more of yourself with your church family, and invite others to do the same. Risk voicing your opinion in a meeting, and try to have a more open and gracious heart when other people voice their opinions. If we all work on opening things up just a little more, we’ll have that much more space to welcome others into our home.
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